A Whole New Game

Without pushing my political agenda on anyone, let me just that no matter who you voted for and what you believe, I have never been more proud to be an American. I am proud of my hometown (TEAM MICHELLE WHITNEY YOUNG DOLPHIN '81 WHAT) and my homestate (the ILlest since 1818), proud of our country, and more than anything, I am proud of us, the so called "youth vote". Young blue voters and young red voters came out en force, and that's what I think is one of the most important things that happened. American democracy is still alive, world.

I know this isn't a political blog or even a personal blog (although I frequently treat it as such), so I won't get all obnoxious about it, but I just want to express my deep disappointment in the fact that while our country took a great step forward recently, we also took significant steps backwards. But as my friend Doc so eloquently put it: "To all those who got their rights stolen [tonight]: It's alright, we're coming back for you."

Chaynge? Yes. Yes we can haz. We live in an amazing country, and I hate to sound like my dad, but goodness, I love America.

Now ... Tina Fey? When are you running for president?

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Now that I have alienated like half of my readership ... 

Not being with my team and not physically being in the States in general makes it very difficult for me to update this blog with any sort of regularity, even though I know I promised I'd try to update as much as possible. Since I already missed CCC and couldn't make my awesome predictions (although I was right anyway, for what it's worth), I thought I'd write about my ultimate experience so far here in China.

Before I even came to Shanghai, I made sure to check that there was ultimate, and sure enough, the ultimate scene was alive and well. I landed in town on a Tuesday, and before I even knew how to say "subway station" in Mandarin, I was stumbling around on Shanghai's Metro towards Jing'An Temple and Monday night ultimate the very next week. Being completely new to town and completely alien to the language, I thought I would think one step ahead and have my Chinese roommate write out the name of the stadium where league took place. I found my way to the Jing'An Temple Metro stop alright, but upon exiting the station, I was completely lost. I hailed a cab and shoved my notebook in the cabbie's face, unable to speak or even recognize the characters my roommate had written. He scrunched up his face and threw the notebook back at me, telling me that no such stadium existed. I panicked. I called my roommate, who didn't know what to tell the cabbie, and finally, I called Milan, a league organizer, and he straightened everything out, and I ended up at the field for my first night of ultimate. 

My introduction to China was a rough one. Even after a year of Mandarin study, nothing could have prepared me for the slang heaven that is Shanghai. Shanghainese sounds NOTHING like Mandarin. I could only understand people when I made my "poor sad laowai (foreigner)" face, and asked them to slow all the way down to word by word pronunciation. I couldn't read anything. I couldn't even read menus, and I ordered the most random, most ridiculous shit for the first two weeks I was in China. It eventually got better, as I got used to the endless stares, "The Chinese Shirt" (if you're really, really, really curious as to what this is, find me at a tournament and I'll show you), all the smoke, and all the spit. Good God, the spit ... 

Through it all, I had league on Monday nights and pick up on Saturdays. Shitty week? Ultimate solves it all. Homesick? Ultimate solves it. Stressed out? Frustrated? Lost? Ultimate. Solves. It. League is something I look forward to week after week. It's different from league in Chicago. For some reason, the defensive, reserved, take-no-prisoner's league-Joann didn't make the trip over the ocean with me. I learned again what I had known all along, deep down -- frisbee is fun, plain and simple. I fell in love with this sport because it was fun, because it challenged me. I compare ultimate to Mandarin a lot. Learning Chinese frustrates the shit out of me. It's hard (that's what she said) and it's complicated, but I wouldn't have it any other way. That's how ultimate is for me. The process is hard -- the running, the lifting, the aches and the pains, the sacrifices -- but getting to lace up my cleats and be on the field is all the pay-off I need. One of the coolest things about ultimate is that, like Mandarin, I feel like you can never really fully master it. There's always something new to learn, a new aspect to work on. I got so wrapped up always wanting to win that I forgot how awesome it is just to play.

Something my Illinois teammates make fun of me for is my lack of spirit. I'll come right out and say it -- I don't think I'm a very "spirited" player. Okay, that makes me sound like an asshole. That's not true. I have spirit ... I mean, I make calls the way I see 'em -- if I think I got fouled, I call it. If I think I caught the disc after it already hit the ground, I'll call it down. I've only ever argued a call once, and that was because that woman was completely insufferable, and went apeshit on me and put her hands on me, something I do not suggest anyone ever do, by the way. I'm small, but I'll fuck you up. So don't do it. So like I was saying, I'm not bad spirited. But I'm not the type who likes to play games and do funny cheers and songs after games. I don't have anything against people who do enjoy them, but I don't really like to partake, because I'm awkward. So in that sense, I don't think I'm "spirited". 

But since playing here in Asia, I've been spirited away, so to speak (a shout out to Asian movie night, which I missed). I recently attended a tournament, the Pan-Asian Tournament in Hong Kong, as a member of Shanghai Hu Wa. We went in with high hopes, since Hu Wa took it all home in 2007. I'd heard a lot about the tournament before I even got on the plane bound for Hong Kong (My real motherland! Cantonese > Mandarin, by the way), and knew the competition would be incredible. I was not disappointed. There were a lot of really talented, experienced teams, and even if some teams didn't have those things, they had raw athleticism and a will to win. I felt like every game was a challenge, and there weren't too many "cupcake" teams.

But for me, what set Asian Ultimate apart from its American counterpart is the spirit they all have here. Even the rivalries are different. Rivalries here aren't like the "slit your throat and shit on your chest rivalries" back home -- rivalries here mean a great deal of respect for the other team. Rivalries here mean acknowledging that the better team beat you that day, and knowing that you'll come back harder next time. I mean, everyone wants to win, but no one is disrespectful about it. I truly felt like it was a community here, in every sense of the word. The good natured heckles, everyone willing to help someone out, everyone is friendly with everyone else. And it was genuine. Not "genuine" because you knew you'd have to play and see this person at least another three or four times on the field or at a party in the coming year, but because you genuinely enjoyed this person and this team's company. There's something so special about that. I couldn't help but feel like everyone at this tournament knew each other. Friends were embracing each other, commenting on how long it had been since they last saw each other, asking about spouses and children. 

I genuinely had a great deal of fun at this tournament, and met a lot of cool people too. Between huffs and puffs, I gave butt-slaps and shook hands with people who out-ran my fat ass up and down the field, and I took compliments from people that I D-ed. I've stood in huddles with teams that we straight up embarrassed, and I've cheered "加油!" and genuinely meant it for a team that beat me. I met players from Singapore, Tianjin, Beijing, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Canada, and the U.S., of course, among other places. I met fellow exchange students from the East Coast, the West, Coast, Canada, and the Midwest. It made me feel like we were family or something -- even if we had never met each other before, if everything about our lives were wildly different, we still had this one thing, this one simple thing that we shared, and there was just this unspoken understanding among us all. It was a cool feeling.

I have been in China since September 1, and since then, I've done a lot of really incredible things. I've climbed the Great Wall -- twice. I've ridden a camel through the Mingsha Sand Dunes. I've thrown a disc in the Gobi Desert. I've been face to face with the Terra Cotta Army. In the misty darkness of the Mogao Caves, I have craned my neck up at some of the tallest Buddha statues in the world. I have climbed the Flaming Mountains, albeit they weren't exactly "flaming" when I made my way up the base in flip flops. I have stared down at Pudong through the glass window underneath my feet in the tallest building in the world. I have made my way through palaces and temples built by emperors thousands of years ago. I have stood in one of the most famous, controversial public squares in the world (name withheld for reasons associated with an older male sibling ... if you know what I mean), and lost my breath as I stared at the portrait of this country's most famous father facing the square.

While all of these things are good and well and completely life-changing, perhaps what I will cherish the most about my experience in Shanghai will be the Asian Ultimate community. From the moment I landed, and undoubtedly until the moment my plane takes off from Pudong in something like forty days, I know that if I needed it, ultimate, and the people I have met through it, would help me through something. I know my time with these people is short, and I'm going to enjoy it. It's this new thing I'm trying, called living in the moment? Yeah, it's working so far.

Perhaps the greatest thing I will learn from China is not conversational Mandarin (说实在的, 我的中文太差了! 真糟糕...) or how to avoid being hit by buses and cars and bikes as I cross the street or even how to drive home a hard bargain. The best lesson I have learned from China is never, ever to take anything for granted again. I live in a place where I can't order a glass of water or any drink with ice in it without being suspicious that I'll spend the next few days bent over a toilet. Ultimate is a luxury, an indulgence. Ultimate is those five or six hours out of the week that I get to be with people who not only completely understand me when I speak, but who also understand my completely irrational love for a piece of plastic. 

If you look at my archives, you'll find an entry I wrote sometime over the summer, about feeling burnt out, about thinking about walking away, because I just didn't love the game anymore. Well, I have never once felt that way about ultimate here. I've thrown into a ridiculously sick Callahan. I've dropped a pull. I've thrown into countless poaches. I've dropped passes all over the place, and I've thrown shitty pass after shitty pass. I've clogged the cutting lanes and I've been unable to get open as the dump. Obviously, those are not "achievements" to be bragging about, but honestly, I've never stopped having fun. I loved fighting through the heat and the pain and the odds at Hong Kong, and I loved laughing and losing at league. I mean, I'm just happy to be playing. That's what it's about, right?

For a lot of people, study abroad is about broadening horizons, seeing and experiencing new things, meeting new people, eating weird shit, and learning about the world around them. I've been lucky enough to do all of those things, and at the same time, find a renewed sense of joy and excitement in the simple things. Funny, the things you find out about yourself when you throw yourself 7000 miles away from home. Call it my journey of solitude in the most populated country in the world.

[During the writing of this post, I corrected my verb tenses at least twenty times. Fuck, the Chinglish has gotten me!]